Vol. 13 | No.

3 |1871-1877| July - September | 2020

ISSN: 0974-1496 | e-ISSN: 0976-0083 | CODEN: RJCABP
http://www.rasayanjournal.com
http://www.rasayanjournal.co.in

EVALUATION AND ESTIMATION OF DRINKING WATER

QUALITY INDEX IN THIRUKKAZHUKUNDRAM BLOCK,
TAMIL NADU, INDIA
A. Amuthini Sambhavi1,*, K. Nagamani2 and B. Gowtham3
1
Research Scholar, Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology,
Tamil Nadu, Chennai-600119.
2
Scientist-C, Centre for Remote Sensing and Geo-informatics,
Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Tamil Nadu, Chennai-600119.
3
Head of the Department and Assistant Professor, Department of Geology,
Presidency College, Tamil Nadu, Chennai-600005.
*E-mail: sambhavi.kabali@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Evaluation and assessment of drinking water quality index (DWQI) of aquifer water in Thirukkazhukundram block
are done in this paper. Thirty groundwater samples from open and Bore wells were collected and analyzed for pre-
monsoon (PRM 2016 August) and post-monsoon (POM 2017 February) physicochemical tests using APHA
procedures. DWQI was calculated by giving weightage to pH,EC,TDS,TH,Ca,Mg,Na,K,HCO3,Cl,SO4.From this
DWQI workout, we get to know that during PRM and POM all the places of sample collection are categorized to be
fit for the drinking category from medium to excellent. The positive correlation between various ion pairs obtained
from SPSS software for PRM and POM major ions respectively is due to chemical weathering, leaching of salts, and
anthropogenic factors. Thus, proper planning and management of pollution-free groundwater could be propelled to
upgrade the medium category groundwater too.
Keywords: Groundwater, Drinking Water Quality Index, Geographic Information System (GIS), Spatial Analysis,
Physicochemical Tests.
© RASĀYAN. All rights reserved

INTRODUCTION
Groundwater is a vital resource for millions of people for both drinking and irrigation purposes. In India,
most of the population is dependent on groundwater for drinking purposes. Therefore, bundles of
researches were carried out concerning groundwater quality. The Water Quality Index is elucidated as a
speculation of the conglomerate impact of distinct quality parameters on the net water quality. It is
principally classified into two types, they are Physicochemical and biological indices. The
Physicochemical indices rely on the values of Physicochemical parameters in a water sample, while
biological indices are relevant to the biological facts. The Water quality index synthesizes complex
scientific data into an easy fit format with the below merits:
 The water quality index can furnish a means to summarize net water quality context in a
communicable mode to the common man.
 It can report to us whether the net quality of water bodies poses a potential threat to innumerable
water usage sectors.
 It can point out a victory in the refuge and reformation efforts.
Here, the area under study has its water quality index arrived at the cause of hydro chemical particulars. It
is worth for spotting and rating of water filthiness. Its appliance in agricultural practice, industries,
municipalities, and rural homes show a ceaseless increase due to the intense hike in the pollution rate.
Hence, serious steps must be taken to evaluate pollution to adopt proper measures to maintain and
manage potable water standards.
Rasayan J. Chem., 13(3), 1871-1877(2020)
http://dx.doi.org/10.31788/ RJC.2020.1335702
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Around 29,000 million litres/day of wastewater is got from class-I cities and class-II towns. Out of this,
about 45% (about 13000 ml) is from 35 metro-cities alone as per Central Pollution Control Board’s latest
report. The treatment capacity accounts for about 7000 million litres/day while the accumulation system
accounts for about 30% of the wastewater alone through the conduit pathway. Wastewater generation,
collection, and remedial measure thereby have a large gap in between. A nearby surface water body or
accumulated cesspools which are a good procreation ground for mosquitoes and subsurface water
contamination serve as the storehouse for a major part of un-collected and un-treated wastewater. Periodic
and proper maintenance of conventional septic tanks and other small budget sanitation facilities must be
checked for sure. The subsurface water filthiness complication in divergent parts of the country has
become so dreadful that unless hasty and prompt strategic steps as remedial measures are taken,
groundwater resources may be harmed. Urban, industrial or agricultural activities threaten land and
pollute groundwater. Groundwater pollution is caused by industrial effluents, landfills, underground
chemical inputs and harmful wastes forming concentrated large scale easily notable pollution sources
which could be regulated compared to the problematic diffuse pollution sources like percolation of
agronomics and animal wastes, underground ejections from washrooms and drainage tanks and invasion
of infected urban run-off and sewage where sewerage does not survive or nonexistent. These pervaded
sources pollute aquifers. Controlling and treating of the diffuse source contaminated aquifers is a tedious
task. Integrated land use and water management form the wholesome remedy to dispersed factors of
filthiness. Using the weighted arithmetic index method, the present study is done. Similar studies also
have been done (Table-1).1-4
Table-1: Land-use Activities and their Groundwater Quality Risks
Land Use Activities potential to groundwater • Un-sewered sanitation
foulness • Dispense of sewage from realm and tributary
Uptown • Sewage oxidation ponds
• Trench detriment, wreckage trashing,
Landfill liquid percolations
• Road and urban overflow, aerial fall out
Technical and Business aligned • Process water, effluent lagoon, etc.
• The Pervasion of seepages from settlement sector and
creek
• Tank and pipeline seepages and unforeseen
Pour outs
• Well pollutant expulsions
• Aerial fall out
• Junkyard trashing and solid ravages and dangerous
ruins
• Substandard household management
• Dismissal and percolations during
stuff management
Tunnelling • Drainage release from mines
• Process water, slurry lagoons
• Solid mine tailings
• Spillages of Oilfield at the group
congregation stations
Countryside • Agrochemicals aid in the cultivation
• Wastewater irrigation
• Litho unit Salinizations
• Livestock rearing
Seaside zones • Saltwater intervention

EXPERIMENTAL
Study Area
In arid and semi-arid areas, the potential use of groundwater for drinking and agricultural projects is
threatened by the decline of water quality due to physical and anthropogenic characteristics. The ideal
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quantity and standard quality of water are one of the essential needs for the survival of mankind on Earth,
but the maintenance of the acceptable quality of water is a challenge in the sector of water resources
management. The water quality assessment is based on several parameters such as physical, chemical,
and biological characterization.

Fig.-1: Location Map of Thirukkazhukundram Block

Water quality index (WQI) is defined as a rating reflecting the composite influence of different water
quality parameters. WQI is one of the most effective tools to interconnect information on the quality of
any water body. In drinking water quality assessment, the decision-making based on water quality data is
a key issue because the number of parameters compromises its quality. There has been considerable
progress particularly based on the principle of WQI using slightly modified concepts. The Geographic
Information System is a very impressive tool for groundwater management and pollution study since it
offers an overlay mapping techniques to identify an association between them. There are several literature
reported for the management of water quality mapping analysis using the GIS platform. The appearance
of satellite technology and geographical information system (GIS) has made it very easy to map the
sampling area. GIS has a wide application in water quality mapping using which informative and user-
friendly maps can be obtained. The objective of the study is to determine the class of all thirty samples
includes bore well and open well using the weighted arithmetic index method. In this method, the eleven
important parameters such as pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Total
Hardness (TH), Calcium (Ca2+), Magnesium (Mg2+), Sodium (Na+), Potassium (K+), Bicarbonate
(HCO3–), Chlorides (Cl–), Sulphates (SO4–) were taken for the assessment. The drinking water quality
index (DWQI) was developed for the study area.

Detection Method
A semi-critical area (CGWB, 2010) covering 352.82 km2, coastal Thirukkazhukundram Block of
Kanchipuram district, Tamil Nadu posed at the south part of India is enveloped by Bay of Bengal in the
East, Maduranthagam in the West, Kattankolathur, Thiruporur in the North and Lattur in the South
located between Latitudes 12˚00”N and 12˚10”N and Longitudes 80˚00”E and 80˚10”E (Fig.-
1).11Agriculture is the main livelihood of the majority of people in this district. Rice is the major crop
grown throughout all over the district. Madurantakam, Cheyyur, and Thirukkazhukundram Block are
major producers of rice in this district. A total of 30 numbers of groundwater samples were collected
during pre-monsoon (2016 August) and post-monsoon (2017 February) from various locations of the
study area as per the standard protocol prescribed by APHA (1995).12The groundwater sample location
points were marked by using a global positioning system (GPS). In this study, eleven physicochemical

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parameters were analyzed using the APHA procedure. The values were compared with the World Health
Organization, WHO, (2011) (Table-2).7
For discerning, APHA procedure8-10based tested water specimens of Thirukkazhukundram Block under
surface water characteristics and its appropriateness for intake utility, Water Quality Index is a salient
criterion.5,6 For working out the water quality index (WQI),a weighted arithmetic quality means strategy
has been put to use. Abided essential three steps are run over below.4,7(Water quality parameters with
their std value and unit wt. std values are given in Table-2).
First step primarily plans for each of the eleven variables to be allocated a weight (wi) as per its respective
influence in the wholesome characteristic of water for intake objective. The parameter with a paramount
consequence in water quality computation has been tagged a maximum weight of ‘5’ and the one with
less consequence has been tagged a minimum weight of ‘1’. The second step progresses with the
corresponding weight specification by:
n
Wi = wi Σwi
i=1 (1)
Where, Wi = relative weight, wi = Weight of each variable, n = the number of variables. The third step
ends up by allocating a quality rating scale (qi) for each parameter by dividing its concentration in each
water specimen by its respective standard as per WHO standards and the result taken as the product of
100:
qi = (Ci Si) ×100 (2)
Where, qi = quality rating, Ci = concentration of each hydro chemical parameter in each water specimen
in mg/l, Si = Sub-index of the ith parameter for each hydro-chemical parameter in mg/l.

SIi = Wi× qi (3)

For arriving at WQI, SI was enumerated for each parameter. Final WQI can be met through the
summation of each sample SI live values by the relation:
n
WQI = ∑SIi (4)
i=1
Spatial Distribution Method
The DWQI results were imported in Arc Map (10.0) and it is integrated with
spatial data. All the data were entered into a spatial database and spatial variations of the results were
developed using the Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) method. The spatial distribution map was prepared
using the IDW interpolation method. Though there are several spatial modelling techniques available
concerning the application in GIS, this method is utilized because of the interpolated value predicted upon
their distance from the output point, thereby generating a surface grid as well as thematic isolines. In the
IDW method, the weightage is the function of the distance between the point of interest and sampling
station.

Table-2: Water Quality Parameters with their Std. Value and Unit wt. Std Values are in mg/l excluding pH and EC.
S. No. Parameters WHO(2011) Std Unit Weight
1. pH 8.5 0.135
2. EC (µg) 1500 0.135
3. TDS 1500 0.135
4. TH 500 0.135
5. Ca 200 0.081
6. Mg 50 0.054
7. Na 200 0.054
8. K 12 0.054
9. Cl 600 0.108
10. SO4 400 0.108
11. HCO3 500 0.027

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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The PRM and POM analytical summary of the scrutinized variables in Table-3 shows that pH stretches
from 7.2 to 8.2 and ranges from 7.03 to 8.09 respectively.EC values stretch from 616.9 to 2766μs during
PRM and during POM, the limit is from 100.8 to 1219μs.PRM TDS limitation is from 438.03 to
1964.20mg/l and POM TDS limitation is from 71.56 to 865.78mg/l.TH varies from 134.5 to 890.1mg/l
for PRM and from 25.5 to 344mg/l for POM.PRM Ca varies from 30.4 to 201mg/l and POM Ca varies
between 7.84 and 86.2mg/l.PRM Mg has its variation from 11.2 to 104mg/l and for POM Mg, it is from
1.2 to 32mg/l.PRM Na varies from 43.2 to 265mg/l and from 10.2 to 136mg/l for POM Na. PRM K limits
between 8.2 and 92mg/l and between 1.23 and 26.24mg/l for POM K.

Table-3: Analytical Summary of the Examined Variables (PRM and POM) Values in mg/l excluding pH

S. No. Variables Minimum Maximum Mean Standard Deviation

PRM POM PRM POM PRM POM PRM POM
1 pH 7.2 7.03 8.2 8.09 7.71 7.56 0.57 0.3
2 EC 616.9 100.8 2766 1219 1311 525.1 91.41 41.17
3 TDS 438.03 71.56 1964.20 865.78 930.63 372.81 64.90 29.23
4 TH 134.5 25.5 890.1 344 379.1 144 36.73 17.9
5 Ca 30.4 7.84 201 86.2 87.1 34.8 12.7 6.9
6 Mg 11.2 1.2 104 32 39.3 14 1.21 0.2
7 Na 43.2 10.2 265 136 129 55 7.09 2.08
8 K 8.2 1.23 92 26.24 30 11.53 5.7 1.99
9 Cl 60 10.2 475 175 193 81.6 17 4.82
10 SO4 38.4 6.52 386 135 136 40.7 1.42 3.66
11 HCO3 149 30.1 607 291 311 131 68.4 7.71

Fig.-2: Pre-monsoon WQI Spatial Distribution Fig.-3: Post-monsoon WQI Spatial Distribution

Cl fluctuates from 60 to 475mg/l during PRM and from 10.2 to 175 during POM.SO4 varies between 38.4
and 386 mg/l for PRM and varies between 6.52 and 135mg/l for POM.HCO3 varies from 149 to 607mg/l
for PRM and from 30.1 to 291mg/l for POM.
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Table-4: NSF WQI

WQI Water Quality Sample Nos Sample %
Value Rating PRM POM PRM POM
<50 Excellent 8 25 27 83
50-100 Good 16 5 53 17
>100 Medium 6 - 20 -
WQI of the parameters varies from 39.67 to 153.3 for PRM and from 20.86to 68.3 for POM.WQI Spatial
distribution maps for PRM and POM using ArcGIS 10.0 are shown in fig.2 and fig.3 samples get
classified as excellent during PRM. Nenmeli, Thirumani, Alagusamudram, Mamallapuram, Kadambadi,
Pandur, Nallathur, Voyalur, are the locations falling under excellent category (Table-4). Sixteen locations
graded under good category WQI during PRM are Mosivakkam, Thazhambedu, Kuzhipanthandalam,
Igai, Navalur, Salur, Pattikadu, Thathalur, Amaipakkam, Kunnathur, Veerapuram, Neikuppi, Vilagam,
Sadurangpatnam, Lattur and Irumbilicheri. 6 places fall under the medium category WQI during PRM.
These PRM places of the medium category are Keerapakkam, Manapakkam, Pulikundram,
Ponvilayanthakalathur, Thirukazhukundram, Kilapakkam. During POM, 5 good category WQI places are
Keerapakkam, Manapakkam, Pulikundram, Thirukazhukundram, and Kilapakkam and the rest of the
twenty-five locations come under excellent category WQI.
Table-5: Pre-monsoon Correlation Matrix Analysis Result of the Groundwater Quality Parameters in the Study Area
pH EC TDS Ca Mg Na K HCO3 Cl SO4
pH 1
EC 0.04492 1
TDS 0.04492 1 1
Ca 0.08309 0.9608 0.9608 1
Mg 0.09187 0.90202 0.90202 0.82424 1
Na 0.03627 0.926 0.926 0.8967 0.82279 1
K 0.00185 0.90263 0.90263 0.83424 0.78235 0.82422 1
HCO3 0.08061 0.90604 0.90604 0.88895 0.85104 0.77198 0.77201 1
Cl 0.00577 0.97162 0.97162 0.91421 0.8706 0.90884 0.8872 0.79704 1
SO4 0.01293 0.93976 0.93976 0.87153 0.79823 0.84913 0.89422 0.75215 0.95797 1
Table-6: Post-monsoon Correlation Matrix Analysis Result of the Groundwater Quality Parameters in the StudyArea

pH EC TDS Ca Mg Na K HCO3 Cl SO4

pH 1
EC 0.0430 1
TDS 0.0430 1 1
Ca 0.0837 0.9146 0.9146 1
Mg -0.050 0.9023 0.9023 0.8435 1
Na 0.0090 0.9664 0.9664 0.8093 0.8446 1
K 0.0116 0.9409 0.9409 0.8515 0.86134 0.8875 1
HCO3 0.0721 0.9842 0.9842 0.9164 0.89644 0.9335 0.9103 1
Cl -0.013 0.9660 0.9660 0.8556 0.86425 0.9453 0.9256 0.9225 1
SO4 0.1235 0.9549 0.9549 0.8749 0.82254 0.9179 0.9097 0.9349 0.8784 1
Values in red are different from 0 with a significance level alpha = 0.5
Accordingly, the result of spatial distribution found that groundwater in most of the parts of
Thirukkazhukundram block is well suitable for drinking purposes. Some part of the study area shows a
medium category in pre-monsoon due to high total hardness and marginally high value of calcium
prescribed by the permissible limit of WHO (2011). The maximum value of TH has been recorded as
890.1 mg/l in the study area. Water with hardness greater than 200 mg/l is considered poor in most
regions of the province and water with hardness greater than 500 mg/l is normally considered
unacceptable for domestic purposes. Water hardness in most groundwater is naturally occurring from
weathering of limestone, sedimentary rock, and calcium bearing minerals. Hardness can also occur locally
in groundwater from the excessive application of lime to the soil in agricultural areas. The relationship
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between the two parameters is well interpreted using the correlation coefficient. It is an easy means by
which behaviour of one parameter prediction by another parameter is well exhibited. In the pre and post-
monsoon samples good correlation exists between EC, TDS, Ca, Mg, Na, K, HCO3, Cl, SO4, with other
ions as marked in red. Chemical weathering accounts for good correlation of HCO3 with Ca, Na, and Cl.
Leaching of salts, and anthropogenic factors contribute mainly for a good correlation of Cl with Ca, Na
and K.SO4 shows a good positive correlation with Na, indicating the leaching of marcasite present in
this region.
CONCLUSION
This study, on account of minimizing the uncertainty and inexactness in resolution arriving, with the aid
of the adopted water quality index (WQI) system using 11 variables in the research domain for subsurface
water, for PRM, has 8 samples sorted under the excellent category,16 samples under good and 6 samples
under the medium category.Viz.27%, 53% and 20% respectively. Hence, PRM excellent category covers
Nenmeli, Thirumani, Alagusamudram, Mamallapuram, Kadambadi, Pandur, Nallathur, Voyalur whereas
during POM, 5 specimens are sorted under good group and rest of the 25 specimens are graded as
excellent category.viz.17%, and 83% respectively. Thereby, locations covered during POM are
Keerapakkam, Manapakkam, Pulikundram, Thirukazhukundram, and Kilapakkam and the rest of the 25
stands for excellent and the highlight is that all the villages of sample collection are categorized to be fit
for drinking category from medium to excellent. Chemical weathering, leaching of salts, and
anthropogenic factors stand as proof to the positive correlation that arrived with the ions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Research Scholar gratefully acknowledges the support extended by Dr.B.Gowtham, Head of the
Department and Assistant professor of Geology, Presidency College, Chennai throughout the work and
renders sincere thanks to Guide, Dr.K.Nagamani, Scientist-‘C,’ Centre for GIS and Remote Sensing,
Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai for her warm guidance.
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